The Fedora
by Pickwick12
Summary: An exploration of the mind of Neal Caffrey. One chapter for each episode, goes alongside the series, written as I watch each episode for the first time. Non-slash, but lots of friendship and family relationships. Stands alone, but is a companion story to The Suit.
1. Immovable

**Immovable**

Unstoppable force meet immovable object.

Neal likes to think of himself as unstoppable. He can get anything he likes, do anything he wants, escape from anywhere they try to keep him. Nobody can catch him. Nobody, that is, except Peter Burke.

That con movie—the one with DiCaprio and Hanks—is so schmaltzy he can't take it. Neal likes romance, not a sad-sack story about a kid who wants to be a conman and the FBI agent who becomes more than a friend. It's ridiculous. See, Peter might have spent three years trying to catch him, but that was the end of it. Neal never saw him again, and he knew he never would. There was none of that fatherly Hanks garbage.

Except, three years and nine months later, there's only one person who comes for him. Sure, they're all after a fugitive, but only of them comes for _him_, and it's Peter Burke. Tall, craggy face, four-year-old suit, that same gentle manner that overlays steely resolve. Neal crashes into him again, and he's just as immovable as last time.

Neal's always been able to move people. Nobody can resist if you push the right buttons. Nobody except Peter Burke, that is. Maybe it's the conman's curse to be the most fascinated by the one person he can't con.


	2. Reflection

**Reflection**

Neal hates blood as much as he likes Peter Burke, and that's saying something. It's funny how much he's come to appreciate that ridiculous, ill-fitting suit and Peter's ancient watch that somehow keeps ticking.

They call it the iron hand of the law, or the long arm of the law, or any number of other unpleasant metaphors for the way justice works, and when Neal had first learned the name "Peter Burke," he'd envisioned that kind of agent—the kind with a big fist, a thick neck, and the unending sternness of Neal's elementary school principal.

Except, that wasn't Peter Burke at all. It wasn't that he was any less devoted to truth, justice, and the American way than any other agent, but he was more than that, too. He was a ready smile, a warm hand on the shoulder, and an offer of respect that stunned Neal Caffrey.

Sometimes Neal thought the ability to read people was a curse, because he couldn't turn it off. He could see the disdain, the wariness, and the anger in the eyes of every agent who questioned him, and he could feel the loss of the one thing he'd always had—his dignity. Once they capture you, it's all gone.

Except, Peter Burke wasn't like that. Peter never once treated him as anything less than an equal. Neal couldn't even remember the last time he'd felt that from someone on the right side of the law. To most people, it was one or the other—crook or straight, and if they were on the side of law, you might as well be a cockroach for all they cared about your humanity.

When Peter looks at him, Neal never feels the ego-boosting adoration he gets from the people who look at his face and are taken in by his appearance or his intelligence. He also doesn't feel the condemnation of all the people who think he's worthless because he's stepped outside the lines so many times.

No, when Peter looks at him, Neal sees the reflection of a man in his eyes, nothing more, nothing less. That's better than anything.


	3. Grace

**Grace**

Neal doesn't like to think about his tab. He's skipped out on plenty of restaurant checks, hotel bills, and credit card charges without looking back. Those things don't keep him up at night.

It's the other things, the existential debts, that gnaw at him. Sure, he helps Burke solve crimes, and he sometimes saves the bureau some money, but deep down, he knows that's nothing against the debt he owes. He can fix June's leaky faucet or make her feel pretty when she misses Byron, but that's nothing to what she's done for him.

Peter thinks he takes it all for granted, but it's not that. It's just that whenever he tries to think about how he could ever pay it all back, ever make it up to them, it's the only time in his life when Neal Caffrey feels clumsy.

It's easy to be a sucker, and Neal has known a thousand of those. What isn't easy is to stare down someone you know for a fact doesn't deserve it and offer him help anyway.

It's grace, a word Neal learned from the nun who taught him in fifth grade, who didn't turn him in to the principal when she found him skulking around outside, trying to cut class. Peter Burke isn't much like a nun, but the word applies.

That's why Neal tries. At first, it was about self-preservation, but then Peter started asking him things that went beyond cases, things like how to romance El, and Neal began to see a way to pay down a little bit of the mountain of debt he'd come to owe. He started to give, not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

Most of the time, he doesn't let himself think about all the things he's been given, scared that the guilt will eat him alive if he gives it a corner of his brain. Even less frequently, he remembers what Sister Elizabeth said—_You can't earn it, Neal, and you can't repay it. That's why it's grace. _

Somehow, he thinks Peter Burke would agree.


	4. Partners

**Partners**

It's funny how much Neal felt like he knew Peter Burke before they'd even met. Cat and mouse is a game that requires knowing someone better than he even knows himself. Maybe that's why he finds it oddly comfortable to sit across a conference table from the older agent and trade ideas, or across a dining table to share coffee. It's strangely normal, even logical, that their strange relationship should have led them here.

What he doesn't expect are the nights Peter cracks open a drink and sits with him when there's nothing to do. Sure, he brings work over, but it's work they both know could wait until morning. Those are the nights Peter picks him over the other things in his life.

El comes first; that's the guiding light of Peter Burke's entire existence, something even Neal Caffrey wouldn't try to challenge. But he starts to realize, once they've solved a few cases together and spent a few evenings holding a goblet and a can, that he has a place in Peter's life, too.

He doesn't get it. Neal Caffrey has boundless confidence in everything he can do—his wit, his charm, and his ability to get out of anything, but Peter Burke doesn't care about any of that. What he cares about is the essence of who someone is, and that's the thing Neal's never had any confidence in whatsoever.

As weird as it is, it's as if Peter Burke likes him most for the things he likes the least about himself.


	5. Origami

**Origami**

Neal always thought normal lives were simple—9 to 5 jobs, little white houses with picket fences, and junk mail that comes from the post office, folded once— buy one get one at the steakhouse down the street, enough for a man and the missus. Boring.

Thing is, there's nothing boring about the way Elizabeth Burke looks at Peter when he comes home from work, the look that tells Neal he needs to scoot so the decade-married, stuck-in-the-mud couple can enjoy a relationship with more to it than he's ever know a relationship could have. There's nothing boring about the respect in the eyes of Peter's colleagues every time he steps into the FBI building. It's nothing like the grudging respect they have for Neal and his abilities; it's real respect, for the man Peter Burke chooses to be.

Neal gets bored on stakeouts, so he absently takes out a piece of paper and folds an origami crane. That's when it hits him. Maybe it's prison lives, crooked lives, outlaw lives that are simple and boring. It's all about ducking and running, never resting, needing another heist to stay afloat. Then it's a single-folded paper with a sentence printed on it that means a lifetime in prison.

Maybe it's the lives he once thought were so simple, the faithful, workaday lives of people like Peter, that are truly complex. Kisses and hugs, fights and makeups, tears and laughter. Finally, ten years on, you have a piece of art—an origami crane of a relationship, folded by the years, until you're left with something breathtaking.


	6. Assumptions

**Assumptions**

Neal Caffrey isn't a fan of doing pointless things that are a waste of time. That's why he doesn't lie to Peter Burke. The man is like a human lie detector. There's a reason he caught the uncatchable—twice.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, though. Once Interpol comes along, Neal has known Peter long enough and well enough to figure out how to deceive him. Everybody can be manipulated somehow, right?

That's when Neal feels an unfamiliar emotion, one he isn't accustomed to harboring—guilt. The queasiness in his stomach bears witness to the fact that the price of knowing Peter well enough to lie to him is being too close to do it without consequences, not from the outside, but from within.

It's easy to tell El; she's the kind of person who looks at you the same, regardless of your criminal record or your penchant for stretching the truth. It's different with women. Neal understands them better than most men, but even he can't quite pin down the place their respect originates. But he doesn't mind telling El.

Peter is a different story. Neal tries to tell himself it's fear for his future that makes his stomach churn and his palms sweat, but he knows he's lying to himself. He knows full well that as much as he wants to find Kate, it doesn't wipe out his growing need for Peter Burke's respect. For once in his life, he can't have his cake and eat it at the same time. Trust is a two-way street for Peter Burke, and Neal has just veered off into a detour. He doesn't know if he'll ever be able to get back.

That's when he learns something new about Peter Burke. If trust is a two-way street, so is forgiveness. He has known for a long time that Peter cares about him, but he's been operating under the assumption that the other man's care and respect are fully dependent on his performance, the carrot held out to keep him in line.

His whole paradigm changes the moment Peter smiles. He offers ready forgiveness, understanding, and the opportunity to start again with no strings attached whatsoever. That's not something you do for an asset. It's something you do for a friend. Neal Caffrey usually hates being wrong, but for once he doesn't mind at all.


	7. Instinct

**Instinct**

Neal Caffrey has instincts. In the past, they've clinched heists, earned him a near-superhuman reputation, and even saved his life.

Instincts are why he goes to the suburbs when he should be running, why he sneaks around the back of a house crawling with FBI instead of boarding a plane to some other country using one of his unknown aliases.

El is his first instinct. She's not hard to read, and he knows she won't turn him in. But behind El, there's Peter. She's a terrible liar, and even if she wasn't, she wouldn't lie to her husband.

Neal hesitates, but only for an instant. After weeks that have turned into months, he trusts Peter—not just as an agent and not just as his friend. He trusts him to be the peculiar mix of the two that can simultaneously be the man who put handcuffs on him and the man who won't turn him in to the agents outside his front door. On some people, that would wear as a contradiction in terms, but on Peter, it fits perfectly.

El gives him a hug; Peter gives him a head start out the door. It might as well be the same thing.


	8. Trustworthy

**Trustworthy**

When all is said and done, agent and conman are no longer undercover, and Neal is left with the mission of finding a music box, there's one thing that sticks with him. Usually, all it takes to let a case go is a hot bath and a nice wine.

This time, he can't shake the memory of the look on Peter Burke's face when he realized they had a problem. If he's honest, Neal knows his partner is as good at reading people as he is, and it only took him about .2 seconds to realize he'd lost Caffrey's trust. That wasn't the surprising part.

The part that shocked Neal was how hurt Peter had looked. It was an unspoken truth between them, or so he'd always thought, that he was forever vying for Peter's trust—the convicted con who could never do quite enough to be the trustworthy associate of an agent like Burke; his own perspective on Peter never mattered. The FBI had the upper hand, and he _had _to trust Burke to survive. If he didn't, nobody cared.

Except, one person did care, and that person was Agent Peter Burke.

Normally, seeing hurt on the face of someone you like doesn't fill you with warmth, but that's exactly what Neal feels when he thinks through the previous few days. There are a complicated lot of things going on in the movie in his mind. He sees Peter's face, then watches as the Burkes both try to reassure him that it's ok, that Peter is still Peter, that—well, that Neal is still as safe with them as ever. Finally, he sees their last conversation play over in his mind, the one where Peter revealed just how much he valued Neal's trust by sharing a piece of information that could have severed their bond forever.

When Neal first realized how much he wanted Peter's trust, he hated himself for it, but knowing that Peter feels the same way—well, that makes it better than he ever could have imagined.

Agent Burke is the least surprising man in the world, except when he isn't.


	9. Little Brother

**Little Brother**

There are things you do for friends, and there are things you only do for family. Neal doesn't have any family.

When it comes to Moz or Alex or one of the other people he's put into his rolodex over the years, he won't hesitate to jump at a moment's notice, even if it means putting himself at risk. He has a code, and that code means giving to the people you care about.

Except, he has limits, just like everybody does. He will risk everything else, but he won't risk going back to prison. His freedom, once won, is his most precious possession. That's not something you give away, not even for the dearest of friends.

Neal doesn't hesitate for a single moment when Elizabeth Burke shows up at his door. Without a moment's pause, he puts a plan in motion that he knows very well could be his one-way ticket back to SuperMax. Limits don't apply where the Burkes are concerned, and there's nothing he wouldn't do to see Peter safe and sound.

When it's all over, Neal wonders what it means when you care about somebody so much that your own safety doesn't even enter the equation. The problem is, family isn't supposed to be a one-sided thing.


	10. Big Brother

**Big Brother**

Neal comes out of sedation gradually and finds himself on the Burkes' living room sofa. It's not that he doesn't remember getting there—exactly. There was a ride in Peter's car and Elizabeth putting a blanket over him, but he can't quite tell what was real and what wasn't.

He doesn't trust his brain because he has memories that can't possibly be true. Somewhere, sometime, he was lying on a conference room floor, knowing full well that he was headed back to prison. That part seems pretty clear—it's the next thing that doesn't make any sense. He remembers, vaguely, saying something about how much he trusts Peter Burke. He doesn't regret saying it; his partner deserved to hear it. It was the least he could do before he went back to lockup. Then, it gets weird. He could swear he remembers Peter patting his head and touching his shoulder, almost like he wanted to hug him, before dashing off and stealing a surveillance video. That part, Neal thinks, _has _to be a hallucination. There's no way Peter would ever do such a thing. Burke has done a whole host of nice things for him, but that goes way over the line of what he would ever do for an asset or a partner.

It doesn't make any sense. Neal knows that his return to consciousness should find him in a cell or an FBI interrogation room after the stunt he pulled at the clinic. It doesn't matter that he meant well; he did enough to go back to jail for life. Instead, he's lying on a comfortable couch, with Elizabeth sitting at the other end, while Peter hovers over him with a concerned expression. It can't be true, but it is.

Sherlock Holmes always said that when you've eliminated everything impossible, the remaining solution, no matter what it is, has to be the truth. Neal can't believe it. There's just no way Agent Peter Burke stole a surveillance video to keep him out of prison. The only person Peter would ever do something like that for is El—the one person he loves most, his life, his family.

But there are no handcuffs around Neal's wrists, and nobody is reading him his rights. He's a free man, and that means Peter Burke has to have done what Peter Burke would never, ever do. That's the only solution that's left, and it makes no sense at all.

Neal's bleary eyes glance around the Burkes' living room. Everything is in place, calm and comforting, just like always. Right before goes back to sleep, he looks up and finds someone smiling down at him who looks a lot like a brother.


	11. Ambivalence

**Ambivalence**

Neal has tried to keep it from coming to this—to keep the two sides of his dualistic existence from colliding with each other. The one thing even Peter's affirmation isn't enough to win is a clean break with the people from his former life. The FBI may see the world as broken up into criminals and the law abiding, but Neal just sees people. Alex is a friend, and that's the important thing.

He really should have seen it coming. There's no reason to think Peter won't put two and two together to find out who Alex is. He never just trusts; he always verifies. The anger Neal feels as a result, well, it's irrational, but that doesn't make it any less potent. He hates being reminded that, for all their camaraderie, Burke still sees through him and suspects anyone he's with.

The complicated part is Neal's realization that his respect for Peter hinges on that unwillingness to look the other way. Most of the time, Neal thinks of Peter as something like a friend, occasionally a brother. Once in a while, when Neal runs up against the brick wall of integrity that he loves and hates in equal measure, Peter seems a little bit like a father.


	12. Thrill

**Thrill**

Days like this, Neal doesn't miss the high life. He'd always thought of federal work as hunching over computers and filling out papers in triplicate. Now he sees the other side, and he understands why a man as smart as Peter Burke enjoys being a fed.

Caffrey and Moz were a team of sorts—Neal the face, Mozzie the wizard behind the curtain. He was never an out front guy. Peter's different. He's just as good at going undercover as he is at aggregating the data from a thousand files. There's something exhilarating about meeting an equal, someone you can riff off, who can keep up with anything you throw at him.

When he's shoulder to shoulder with Burke, Neal never looks back.


	13. Danger

**Danger**

Angry Peter Burke isn't something you see every day. Neal wasn't kidding when he said "mildly irritated cop" was as much as he thought his partner could handle. Very few things have the power to get under Burke's skin, and, until today, the only one Neal could think of off the top of his head was someone threatening El. Today added one more thing to the list: putting Neal Caffrey in danger. The conman has never seen Burke angrier than he is at Agent Rice for treating his life lightly.

Neal's never thought of himself as thick, but Peter's anger makes him think he might be a little slow on the uptake. If he were just an asset, even a valued one, it wouldn't matter. Burke would have no reason to care if the Bureau uses him however it sees fit. No, his rage means there's far more to it than a mere deal between a fed and a con.

That's why, when it's time to go, Neal isn't sure he'll be able to look Peter in the eye. Knowing someone really cares is a dangerous thing, dangerous enough to change your mind.


	14. Stupid

**Stupid**

Biting the hand that feeds you is stupid

Neal is ready for one last job. He doesn't care what he has to do, as long as Kate is at the other end of the line. That's all he's ever wanted. He doesn't care that he has to lie to anyone, not even Peter. Ends to means; that's all. Burke won't care when he's gone, anyway. Why would he? He's a good man, far too good to be stuck with a cocky ex-con for four years. Let him go back to life before Caffrey.

It's only stupid to bite the hand that feeds you if you wanted to eat whatever they were forcing into your mouth. Neal's a con; nothing more, nothing less. He'll never change, no matter how much they try to make him.

Fighting the arms that hold you is stupid.

Neal can't go through with it. He says goodbye to everyone but Burke, because Peter is the single person in the universe who can change his mind. For the first time, Neal knows the impressive power of expectations in the hands of someone he trusts. Peter's eyes stare him down with absolute certainty that he has it in him to change. That invitation is more mesmerizing than the most skilled conman could ever be.

It's stupid to fight the arms that hold you so you can't rush headlong into the inferno that just killed the person you love most in the world, but Neal is beyond reason. It's only later that he realizes what it all meant. If Peter hadn't been there, he'd have died. Strong arms had kept him from the fire, but the weight of Burke's belief in him had kept him from the plane that would have been his tomb.

Sometimes he wishes he'd died with Kate. Most of the time he can't understand what Peter Burke sees in him that makes him so dead level sure there's a better man inside Neal Caffrey.

* * *

**A/N: This concludes the chapters for Series 1. Series 2 will follow! Thanks for reading and reviewing. I'm so impressed with the quality of the show's writing. **


	15. Deal

**Deal **

It's weird to be staring at Peter from the other side. The SuperMax table is the same cold piece of an institution, and Neal is seated in the same place as always, but the situation is a mirror image.

The first time, he was the one who begged. He and Peter both knew that with Burke around, Neal's only way out of jail was the deal he so desperately pitched to the man who made all other escape impossible. He didn't really know why Peter accepted; sometimes he thought it was about more than information, but he really wasn't sure.

This time, he's the one holding the cards, and Peter is the one asking. The funny thing is, it's still Peter who stands to lose and Neal who stands to gain. With his job on the line, it would be easy enough for Burke to forget all about Neal Caffrey and go on winning medals for himself for twenty more years. The conman doesn't get why he won't just do it.

Except, that's a lie; he does know. There's a depth of caring behind Peter's offer that is almost more daunting than four extra years in prison. It's a responsibility Neal's not sure he can handle. Winning freedom his own way may only ever be temporary, but it doesn't have any strings attached.

There's a reason they bind hands during the marriage ceremonies of some cultures, Neal thinks, as he lets Jones put the tracking anklet back underneath the luxurious fabric of his charcoal suit. Sometimes a deal isn't just a deal.


	16. Artwork

**Artwork**

Sometimes Neal forgets that he's not the only one who knows things that other people don't. He definitely didn't expect to find himself lying on a bed next to Diana, learning about a whole world he's never heard of before.

There's a metaphor, he realizes. Neal likes symbolism. Diana peels back mediocre hotel art to reveal pictures blazing with light and life and color. Most of them wouldn't pass muster in an art museum, but they're visceral, personal, pieces of the minds of people without homes beyond the walls of hotel suites.

It's like the opposite of forgery—taking something generic and making it personal, not for recognition, but for the pure pleasure of creating, leaving a mark, making something home that was never meant to be. Forgery is taking a personal gift and making it generic—enough like another person's work to receive the recognition really due someone else.

A bit like the difference between being a criminal and going straight, Neal thinks. Before Peter Burke had caught him, Neal had always had a mental picture of the straight and narrow as plain and impersonal, a bit like a hotel suite you live in—all the necessities are there, but there's no life and color.

Now, watching Diana draw a piece of sharpie artwork behind an abstract print, he realizes the truth. The life of a criminal is like forged artwork—always grasping, sometimes succeeding, but only ever receiving rewards that belong to someone else, the fruit of somebody else's labor, pieces of another's stolen life.

The straight life might seem like walls filled with boring paintings, but if you peel them away, you find the Burkes' late-night kisses, the satisfaction of cases closed, the feeling of going home with nothing on your conscience. It's where you find the real art.


End file.
